Newswatch

By Thomas Griffith

Newspapers used to be content with printing what they knew. The New York Times, which has acres of space to fill, has lately been telling its readers what it doesn't know. It names the news sources it could not reach, to show how fairly it covers a story (a check by computer shows that in the past 14 months the Times told its readers 101 times that a news source "did not return telephone calls"). On occasion the paper also publishes a series of questions about stories in the news that it doesn't know the answer to. Is this to show the reader yes, we also thought about that?

When a prominent New York City politician tried to kill himself just before his name came up in a bribery scandal, the Times published a helpful little box of unanswered questions, such as where had he spent the previous seven hours, and with whom. Sometimes, in a column under the heading "Questions Without Answers," the Times offers a later updating on "questions that defy news reporting, at least for a while." What happened to those five Monets and two Renoirs stolen from a Paris museum last October? Was Vitaly Yurchenko an authentic defector who changed his mind, or a double agent? Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal considers this column "an interesting thing to do." Too often, however, after having raised a question again, the Times discovers that there is nothing really new to add. Had there been something, the Times presumably would have run a story. The trouble with this practice is that newspapers are already filled with too many unanswered or unanswerable questions. They form the most boring part of any paper.

All news, it could be said, is divided into three parts. The first, where most of the excitement lies, is the unexpected--the earthquake, the coup, the riot, the crash, the death of some prominent person. The second is the known event heading toward resolution--the forthcoming election, the fate of a bill in the legislature, the possibility of a veto--on which the paper provides progress reports.

Finally, there are those unanswered questions that never seem to get settled and never seem to go away. Their very place names cast a pall--Belfast, Beirut, Cyprus--reflecting irreconcilable enmities that have existed for centuries. In other places around the world, stabilized injustice seems to be slowly giving way to whatever will follow. For long periods, this movement may only be measurable by the hour hand of history, but journalism feels compelled to note every ticktock of the second hand. The reader returns from a month's vacation to find Jordan's King Hussein still fretting over whether to negotiate with the Israelis, playing a game of pull me forward--no, pull me back. The reader could be away for two years and return to find Yasser Arafat still debating whether to accept U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 and thus "implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist." Editors could save a forest of newsprint by printing only actual developments, manfully resisting a dogged repetition of what is already too familiar about the situation, including what is unpredictable. Journalists have their own derisive name for such wordy speculations: "thumb-suckers."

A similar information overload happens every time a big news story breaks. For hours, radio and television repeat what they know ("for those who tuned in late") and raise unanswered questions about the rest; they are joined later by newspapers and magazines. They are all doing their competitive best, and much is quickly learned by the newsgatherers, but oh, the surfeit of words!

One of Rosenthal's illustrious predecessors as editor of a New York newspaper was Horace Greeley of the Tribune, which no longer exists. It was an affectation of Greeley's to pluralize as the English do when a singular word has a plural context, as in "the government are concerned." Once Greeley impatiently cabled one of his correspondents, "Are there any news?" Back came the answer: "Sorry, not a single new." That unsung correspondent may only have intended a funny reply, but he appears to have had a firm grip on what needs to be reported.